


find out where they hide her

by whyyesitscar



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1848775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyyesitscar/pseuds/whyyesitscar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Today she’s here on purpose and so she’s going to buy two windmill cookies on purpose, right after she unfortunately (but still on purpose) informs Santana Lopez—owner, head chef, and occasional payer of taxes—that she’s being audited." Brittana, semi-Stranger Than Fiction AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	find out where they hide her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazarus_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/gifts).



> because it's [lazarus_girl's](http://lazarusgirl.tumblr.com/) birthday (go wish her a happy birthday) and it's been way too long since i've written brittana.

The IRS is a place you end up. No one ever sets out to work here, and yet people still do. Brittany’s on a mission to meet them all, but the list of people she’s already met keeps getting lost and so she ends up just saying hi to the same twenty coworkers. One of these days she’ll start over right.

Brittany’s here because she’s great with numbers and too great with people, which means that she has an attention problem, Ms. Pierce, and it would be beneficial if you were to work in an environment with limited social interaction. Brittany loves her job when she’s around other people, but she’s productive when she’s not.

So she works at the IRS, auditing ordinary people and daydreaming the hours away so she doesn’t feel bad about it. She dreams about diving into clouds, or what if dragons breathed stardust instead of fire, or how if you tune the world out hard enough everything sounds like the ocean.

Brittany dreams about where she might end up next.

/

On Tuesday she ends up stubbing her toe bumping into a friend in the hallway, which makes her trip over at least three feet, which sends her stack of manila folders sprawling across the floor to mix with the even larger stack her friend has.

Brittany stands up, smiling and laughing it off, and gets a couple friendly jabs in before parting ways.

Two hours later she’ll discover she’s accidentally picked up an extra folder, and two hours and five minutes later she’ll decide to do something about it.

/

The bakery is called Flan Quixote. Brittany passes by it sometimes because it’s on the way to her favorite independent movie theater but she never stops in because somewhere in between laughing at the name and debating whether to buy their famous windmill cookies, her feet forget to stop walking and she’s too far away to turn around.

But today she’s here on purpose and so she’s going to buy two windmill cookies on purpose, right after she unfortunately (but still on purpose) informs Santana Lopez—owner, head chef, and occasional payer of taxes—that she’s being audited.

“Can I help you?”

The same Santana Lopez who is currently staring her down in a way that is the exact kind of friendly bakers shouldn’t be.

“Um, yes, are you Ms. Lopez? My name is—”

“Are you going to buy something or not?”

“Well, not yet.” Brittany shakes her head. “I’m from—”

“If you’re not buying anything, there are people behind you who will. Stick around and maybe I’ll get around to chatting with you.”

Brittany doesn’t say anything, just steps to the side and sits at a free table. To be fair the line is out the door and it’s right in the middle of the breakfast rush, so she’s not totally annoyed. Plus Santana has a lot of tattoos on her arms and if Brittany alternates between squinting and widening her eyes, she can make them move. Forty five minutes later and she’s almost got a choreographed routine.

Santana glances at her as she wraps up the last of the pastries for a nervous assistant (his hair is too gelled, his suit doesn’t fit right, and he can’t stand still—Brittany knows he has someone important to impress and she knows he isn’t succeeding at it.)

“Still here?” she sneers.

Brittany shakes her head again and blinks her eyes. “Yeah. Do you have a minute to sit and talk?”

“No.”

“Would you have a minute if my bag was full of chocolate?”

“I don’t know, is it dark chocolate?”

“Well, it’s imaginary chocolate so I guess it could be dark or milk or any kind at the same time.” Brittany smiles. “Kind of like Schrodinger’s chocolate.”

Santana wrinkles her brows. She tips her head toward Brittany’s bag and blows a hair out of her face. “If it isn’t chocolate, what is it?”

“Tax returns.”

Santana slams dough down on the counter and sends flour puffing toward her face.

“Oh, fuck.”

/

Santana’s filing system is really just a closet with a flimsy door and a hopeful lock. Papers avalanche out when Brittany opens it up.

She gets comfy at a table in the back, out of the way of customers but in full view of the counter because Brittany likes the bustle. Santana spends the morning bad-mouthing the government in unnecessarily loud tones to anyone who will listen, which is okay because Brittany gets lost in taxes and forgets to notice the dirty looks everyone is throwing her.

Sometimes, when she raises her head to settle the swirl of numbers, there’s a muffin and a big glass of milk waiting for her.

/

“So, am I totally fucked?”

Santana plops down across from her and only then does Brittany realize that the shop is empty.

She also realizes that Santana has tattoos in places other than her arms but maybe it’s not the best idea to stare at her chest in an attempt to figure out if it’s wings or trees that are hiding behind her shirt.

“Hellooo, are you even listening?” Brittany blinks. “Oh, hi,” Santana sneers, a tight-lipped smile stretching across her cheeks. “Thanks for letting me know it’s not just guys who ogle my tits all the time.”

“What, no; I wasn’t, I mean, are those doves or swallows on your—”

“Just tell me how much I owe so we can get this over with.”

“I still have half a closet to go through, Ms. Lopez. I won’t know until I’m done.”

“So are you back tomorrow then?”

Brittany nods. “I hope that’s okay, because I really work well when someone is shouting about the imperialist swine who put egregious amounts of taxpayer money toward national defense and campaign discretionary funds.”

“Not any of _my_ taxpayer money.”

Brittany smiles. “Yeah, I know; I read that lovely letter you included. The content lost me, but you get points for style.”

Santana smiles too, and Brittany marvels at how it changes her whole face. “Are you even allowed to be joking about this audit?”

“Oh no, joking about audits is totally illegal. But that’s okay, because I’m joking about you.”

A timer dings as Santana wrinkles her eyebrows again, only this time she looks happier doing it. Brittany packs up her things as Santana slides a baking sheet out of the oven; the smell of warm sugar cookies wafts over in a matter of seconds.

Brittany walks over to the counter and watches Santana transfer the cookies to a platter.

“How did you get into baking?”

Santana looks up, appraising Brittany from beneath a surprised glance. “College,” she finally says.

“Oh, did you go to pastry school?”

Santana curses as a cookie breaks mid-transfer; she scoops up the crumbled bits and plops one in her mouth, smiling and humming her approval. Brittany takes a moment to notice how attractive a hum it is.

“No, med school actually,” Santana explains. “We would host this big study sessions and everyone was nuts about memorizing body parts and numbers and I would make cookies to try and calm them down, and after a few months I realized I didn’t know a thing about the nervous system but I had dry ingredient ratios down cold. Dropped out a couple weeks later and here I am.”

“That’s really nice.”

“I can’t make the whole world better, but I can make a damn good cookie, and sometimes that’s enough. Here.” She hands over a cookie on a plate; it has a crack in the middle but otherwise looks like the most delicious cookie Brittany’s ever seen. “For your troubles.”

“My troubles?”

Santana chuckles. “Well, I didn’t exactly make life easy for you today, did I? Have a cookie.”

“Oh, no, Ms. Lopez; I ate four muffins today and I think I ran you out of milk. I couldn’t accept.”

“It’s just a cookie.”

“Really, I wouldn’t feel right. You know what—how many muffins and milk did you give me today? Let me return the favor and pay you back.”

“You want to pay me.”

“Yeah, I want to buy the food you gave me. Isn’t that how commerce works?”

Santana rolls her eyes and tosses the cookie into the trash can. “Commerce, right. What’s a little gift when you can have _commerce_. What did you say your name was again?”

“Brittany Pierce.”

“Okay, Brittany Pierce.” Santana takes off her apron and hangs it on a hook and Brittany thinks no one has the right to look so dashing covered in the memories of baked goods. “Here’s how you can repay me: don’t come back tomorrow.”

/

Brittany sends another auditor to get the rest of the files.

She goes over them in her office with nothing but a thin sandwich for company.

Brittany daydreams about birds.

/

The bus runs later than she thought, which is nice because whenever Brittany has a specific place to go she usually ends up finding four places she didn’t first. She makes it to the shop just in time, and hops on the last bus that will take her near the café, even though she has to jog the last five blocks. She’d run but then she’d end up with a face full of variously flavored powders.

“Ms. Lopez! Wait, Ms. Lopez!”

Santana turns around, key still in the door as she searches the street for the source of the shouting, frowning when she finds Brittany.

“Hi,” she snaps.

Brittany takes the last few steps at a brisk walk. “Hi, I’m sorry; I know you probably don’t want to see me right now but I had to come back.”

“Oh yeah?”

Brittany lifts up the box in her hand. “I got you something.”

“You got me something,” Santana jeers. “Is there a price tag on it?”

“No, I—”

“Is this another exciting example of commerce at work?”

“Listen, I’m sorry—”

“Whatever those are, tell me how many you have and I’ll buy them from you.”

“Ms. Lopez, I’m really sorry about earlier today,” Brittany blurts in a rush, trying to get everything out before Santana has time for another sarcastic remark. “I don’t—I have good reasons for doing things but sometimes I do them in really bad ways. I didn’t want to offend you. I just didn’t want to seem like a moocher either.”

“You’re not a moocher if I offer something to you, Ms. Pierce.”

“You can call me Brittany.”

“I know.”

“Okay, well—here.” She extends the box to Santana, who looks at her briefly before blatantly not taking it off her hands.

“What are they?”

“Flours.”

“What?”

“I got you flours.”

“You got me…?”

“Well, see, there’s this spice shop by my office and they have all these different kinds of flours and I thought you might know the owner because, you know, you bake. But the guy behind the counter didn’t know you and he got kind of weird when I asked and he wouldn’t stop staring at me which was actually pretty impressive because I’m pretty sure he only had one eye. So I just picked out my favorite colors; I hope they turn out alright and they aren’t, like, wheat germ flavored or something.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, but most flour is some kind of wheat flour.” Brittany is ready for another sneer but what she gets instead is a smile. “You really don’t know what any of them are?”

“I started writing a list but then I had to run for the bus.”

“Do you have time to find out?”

“Well—”

“Would you have time if I said I had more tax returns at my apartment?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s okay,” Brittany shrugs. “I think I can spare a few minutes.”

“Here, let me take those from you,” Santana offers as they start walking.

“No, it’s fine. You knead dough and lift pans all day. Me, I shuffle papers and sometimes if I’m feeling really crazy I staple them. I can handle a little bit of flour.”

Santana giggles and brushes a lock of hair from her cheeks; in the breeze, the paper bags crinkle. If flour didn’t have a sound before, it does now, Brittany thinks. Rustling and laughing and the way Santana’s dry fingers slip against her arm.

“They’re swifts, by the way.”

“What?”

“The birds on my chest,” Santana smiles. “They’re swifts.”

“Oh. Why swifts?”

“Well, they’re crazy fast fliers. But also people mistake them for swallows when they’re really related to hummingbirds. I like things that aren’t what they seem.”

“You mean like how you look like a nice wholesome baker when you’re really a cranky anarchist?”

Santana laughs and this time Brittany thinks her swifts have migrated to her throat because her laugh is like a song.

“Yeah. Like that.”


End file.
